FTC Seeks Public Comments On Additional Proposed Revisions To Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule

This article first appeared in Cyberlaw Currents, a Frankfurt Kurnit legal blog.

As part of the Federal Trade Commission's ("FTC") efforts to update the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule ("COPPA"), the FTC has proposed to further modify the Rule to clarify its scope and strengthen its protections for children's personal information. These proposed revisions follow comments previously received by the FTC back in 2011. Specifically, the FTC is proposing the following additional changes to the rule:

Clarify that an "operator" of a child-directed site or service that chooses to integrate the services of others that collect personal information from its visitors should itself be considered a covered "operator" under COPPA; Clarify the definition of "Personal information" to make clear that a screen or user name will be considered personal information where it can be used to recognize a user over time, or across different sites or services, where it is used for purposes other than support for internal operations; Clarify that activities such as site maintenance and analysis, performing network communications, use of persistent identifiers for authenticating users, maintaining user preferences, serving contextual advertisements, and protecting against fraud and theft will not be considered collection of "personal information" as long as the information collected is not used or disclosed to contact a specific individual, including through the use of behaviorally targeted advertising, or for any other purpose; Expand the definition of "website or online service directed to children" to clarify that a plug-in or ad...

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